


Banned

by winterda



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:26:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterda/pseuds/winterda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many books in the Storybrooke Library, and Belle is making her way through them.  One night Mr. Gold catches her reading a very interesting one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Banned

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for the Rumbelle Secret Santa. I thought I'd share it here.  
> For: ourloveoverhealing   
> Prompt: He keeps trying  
> Disclaimer: I do not own Once Upon a Time.

It was well past dark when Mr. Gold made his way into the library. The bite of the December chill had been harsh all that day, and the few minutes walk from his shop to here had stung his face. The harsh heat was a relieving welcome, and he was again glad that Mr. Scotts -- or Jack as he now preferred -- had managed to get the heat up and running again before the first real cool snap. He didn’t even have to threaten the man. 

Removing his gloves, Gold glanced about and was unsurprised to find the place empty. The town of Storybrooke wasn’t exactly the literary hub of the world. Then, the general attitude of this world as a whole towards libraries was less than desirable. 

Libraries a full of interesting things if one simply takes the time to actually look. Each shelf contains all sorts of information and knowledge and ideas that could be extremely beneficial or poignant or life changing if a person only took the time to discover those secrets that had been laid before them. 

Open a book and see what wonders it may behold. 

Most people don’t take the time, of course. They were too busy with their lives as a whole, and in world full of instants (food from a microwave, entertainment from television, all the knowledge of the world from a search engine) taking the time to read was not the highest of priorities. 

Just from his own observations of the local high school students, the culture of this world frowned down upon reading anything that was not concerned with teenage vampires, children murdering one another for the entertainment of the masses, or boy wizards fighting the forces of darkness. Everything else was forced upon them by overzealous English teachers who surely couldn’t think that anything written before the beginning of the new millennium could have anything to do with life today. At least, that was what he heard a one Miss. Meredith Archer complain loudly one afternoon as she and her friends herded her brothers past his shop on their way from the school bus stop. Surely this Shakespeare guy didn’t know anything about how love was actually suppose to go these days. 

Oh, how he wept for the future.

Then, their parents were not much better. He couldn’t say the last time he had seen a woman with a book in their hand that didn’t either have a muscular man gripping tightly onto a woman in a bodice and wind-blown hair. Nor a man with one in general. Adults in town just did not seem any more interested in reading than their children, which was probably one of the reasons why the town library had been closed in the first place. 

Well, that and the dragon in the basement.

Even with the curse broken, no one here seemed all the eager to take up the hobby except for his dear Belle. 

Few people ventured to the library, so many days she was left to her own devices. It suited her just as well. Unlike everyone else, Regina had neglected to give her a set of memories which included a stand list of stories that had to be read and studied in this world’s school system. That allowed Belle the privilege of making her way through all the books in the library with fresh eyes and experiencing them with the due respect of one who just love to read. 

She was making quiet of bit of headway already. Gold had given her a list of titles that he thought she would enjoy, and he knew that Ruby had as well. She had made her way through them quickly and now had expanded outward to choosing random books from the shelves. 

Most of the time when Gold would go to pick her up for dinner or whatever it was she felt like doing that evening, there would be a stack of books sitting on the counter that she had read and had to put away.

That evening was no different. He grinned to himself as he read over the titles: The Neverending Story, On Dreams, Life and Times of Fredrick Douglass. There were a few other shorter works placed to the side as well, though he didn’t recognize their titles. Still, at the rate she read, he would be surprised if she hadn’t finished all the books by the beginning of spring. 

“Belle,” Gold called. “Belle?”

When no answer was given to him, he made his way through the book stacks and towards a small, cozy corner by was near one of the windows. Even though she often chided herself about how she should sit up front at the counter, Gold still found her back here more often than not. Out of the way and quiet -- that was where she preferred to spend her days reading her books. 

As expected that was where he found her. Her knees were curled up in the overstuffed chair so that she could balance her book against them, and her eyes were fixed steadily upon the words. Gold recognized that look of sheer concentration. She quite often wore it when she was particularly engrossed and/or fascinated by what she was reading. He knew that the town could very well be under attack from pirates, and she would be none the wiser being too caught up in her book. The last time she had worn such a look was when she was reading Charles Darwin’s On the Origins of Species. He didn’t remember her cheeks being quite so pink, however. 

“Belle,” he said again. 

Her only response was to turn her page.

Gold tried to gain her attention once more, only to be met with similar results. Ah, now, his own curiosity was peaked. 

He approached her none to quietly, for one who walks with the aid of a cane was bound to make noise. Belle didn’t so much as blink. Leaning close to her ear, he smiled at her obliviousness. As he prepared to whisper her name in her ear (because he knew that this close she could not ignore him) he glanced down at her book and froze. 

On one side of the page was a drawing. It was old, and the characters were drawn in a more boxy style than he saw in most art. He colors too were bright and eye catching. It was rather beautiful, really, but it was what the subjects were doing that caught his attention. Or, rather, how they were doing it and apparently vigorously so.

“What are you reading?” he heard himself ask.

Belle let loose something that rather sounded caught between a scream and squeak as she slammed the book shut and jumped to her feet. Gold was sure that had it been anyone else they would have tossed the book across the room for good measure. This was Belle, however, and she would never do such a thing even if she were embarrassed by what was inside of it. Judging by the depth of the color that now burned her face, she very embarrassed indeed. 

“I…um.” Smiling unsteadily at him, Belle said, “I didn’t hear you come in. Is it time for dinner already?”

“Indeed it is,” he replied 

She slid the book easily behind her back as if she were a teenager who had been caught looking at a magazine that their parents wouldn’t approve of and was now doing a poor job of hiding the fact. She was moving slowly away as well, he noted, like she thought that perhaps he wouldn’t notice, and she could get rid of the evidence before he got too close of a look. It was a bit late for that, though.

“Well,” Belle said, “let me just go put this away and put on my jacket, and we can be on our way.”

She turned on the balls of her feet as if she were about to leg it when he said, “Belle.”

Oh how she cringed when she stopped, and Gold did as well on the inside. He didn’t know why he couldn’t let her go and put away the book and save them both a bit of embarrassment. It would have been the gentlemanly thing to do, after all; and he truly did try to be a gentleman for Belle. However, some part of him felt compelled to call her back. That part wanted to see her cheeks burn that pretty pink color and perhaps make her stammer a bit. She was just so lovely that way. Still, he was sure she probably would stop insisting that he wasn’t a monster after this.

Taking sure, slow steps, he said, “I believe I asked you a question.”

“You did?” she asked. 

Her eyes were wide, and she stood stock still as he stopped only a step or two from her. The book was clutched tightly against her chest, and she watched uneasily as he reached for it.

“Indeed I did. I asked you what you were reading,” he said as he gently pulled the book from her grip. 

He knew what it was before he read the title, but it was still hard for him to comprehend the fact that his Belle was reading such a thing. 

Refraining from clearing his suddenly dry throat, Gold said, “I was unaware that our library had an adults only section.”

The pretty pink of her cheeks blossomed into an even deeper red as she snatched the book back. He watched her as she gathered up a few of the things she had left about in an unconscious effort to mark the area as her territory for reading. He noted that she was very careful to keep her back to him as if she thought that if she didn’t look at him this might not be as bad as she thought. The dress she wore, however, hugged her in a way that was surely not going to make this less difficult as long as she insisted on being over like that.

“I found it in the back,” she said once an empty coffee cup and what looked to be the old wrappings of a sandwich from Granny’s secured in her hands. “It was in a box marked ‘banned.’”

Following her back towards the counter, he asked, “And you couldn’t fathom why a book would be?” 

Belle nodded as she walked into her office and dropped the book off on her desk. 

“I know there were books back at the castle I wasn’t allowed to read,” she said.

Something that was between a smile and a frown pulled at Gold’s lips. Oh, yes, he did remember that day. He had left for the day on business and had come home to find Belle curled up in front of the fireplace happily reading away on a book about necromancy. Darkness has a way of recognizing other darkness, and that particular book was perhaps one the blackest in his collection at the time; yet one would think that she was reading a particularly interesting gardening by the type of questions that Belle was muttering to herself. (He never did have the heart to tell her she did that sometimes, and apparently no one else did either.) 

How someone could read such a thing and so innocently had given him pause; and so had the murderous spirit she had accidentally summoned while repeating one particular phrase aloud. The latter had been taken care easily enough, but it had been a bit more of challenge to convince Belle that there were certain books in his collection that she was not to read. 

He found that just strictly forbidding it had only peaked her curiosity. One would think that the previously mentioned murderous spirit would have been to put her off, but it had actually taken him showing her several other horrible things that could happen if she didn’t listen to him to finally agree to not read certain books of his. Watching the fish that was to be for dinner turn itself inside out turned out to be very persuasive thankfully.

“I didn’t want you to get hurt,” Gold agreed. “Those were some very powerful books.”

The slight tent of green that colored Belle’s cheeks told him that she remembered as well.

“But there was no magic here,” she went on. “Not until you…”

The rest of the sentence hung between them, as it always seemed to do. That was his Belle, though. She was curious enough to read about magic in books, but that didn’t mean that she approved of using it as often or as freely as he did.

“Yes, until I,” he repeated.

A sad smile passed over her lips as she pulled her coat off the hook next to her office door. 

Suddenly finding her gloves more interesting than anything else in the room, Belle said, “I was just curious about them is all.”

“Oh, I’m well aware of your curiosity,” Gold replied lightly. “Tell me, how long where you really stuck in that room in the west wing?”

The one I explicitly told you not to go into, he didn’t say, though the both heard it.

This time the grin that bloomed on her face born neither embarrassment nor sadness. It was just accompanied by a small laugh and shake of her head.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Belle replied before looping her arm through his. “We better hurry if we want to get a booth at Granny’s.”

Gold put up a bit of a protest at going to the diner citing that it would already be overcrowded thanks to the increase of two more people to the Charming family once more but there was no real bite to it. If that was where she wanted to go, he’d gladly take her there. (Thankfully, the family was no where to be seen that evening.)

However, Gold found it difficult to concentrate that evening because even though he kept trying he couldn’t forget that he had caught his beautiful, lovely, curious Belle reading the Kama Sutra.

\------------------------------ 

For a person who spent almost a year of her life as a caretaker of a large estate, Belle wasn’t exactly the tidiest person. That wasn’t to say that her cozy little apartment in the back of the library was a complete mess, but the blush that crept across her cheeks as she let them inside had little to do with the cold. Not that Rumplestiltskin would think much of the mess. She had seen his home (both of them) in far worse disarray than her own, but it still wasn’t something she felt very comfortable with.

Nudging a boot that had somehow made its way from next to the wall out into the middle of her floor out of the way with her foot, Belle slipped off her coat and turned on the lights.

“Tea?” she asked. 

She could hear him shifting around behind her as she headed for the kitchen. It had been more of a rhetorical question, but manners dictated that she ask.

“Yes, thank you,” Rumplestiltskin answered. Belle could hear his cane start to tap towards the living room area while she filled the tea pot and then set it on the stove.

The night hadn’t exactly gone the way that Belle had thought it would. She couldn’t say that it was a disaster or anything as dramatic as that, but the while even something awkward had hung between them. Unfortunately, she knew what it was as well.

There were times where she truly did hate her own level of curiosity.

Belle had always been curious creature. Her father use to tell her that the cats in the castle were less so than her, and she believed him. There were many afternoons that she could remember from her childhood where she would sneak off from her nurse to go explore the parts of the castle that she wasn’t allowed to be just because she wanted to know what was there. One particular memory stood out when she spent an entire day hiding in the kitchen just so she could see what the cook did all day and how she prepared their food. No one was pleased with her for disappearing like that, but Belle had thought it well worth it since she now understood why her stew tasted the way it did.

It was incidents such as that that prompted her mother to start to teach Belle how to read. The hope was that maybe they could focus her curiosity to what could safely be found in books. It had worked, of course. Probably better than anyone had hoped. 

That little, nagging need to look still got the better of her sometimes. It was the reason that she went exploring through that closet and found that box. A little boredom and eye strain does wonderful things for her curiosity.

Belle hadn’t chosen the book deliberately. It just happened to be that the Kama Sutra turned out to be the first one she had pulled out of the box. When she first opened it, she hadn’t even known what it was about until she got a few pages into it. Even though there was no one else around, Belle had still felt incredible embarrassed when she realized that it was a book that dealt with sex. Well, partly dealt with sex. 

As a whole, she had found that physical love was only a section of the book while other parts dealt with things finding a wife, how a wife should behave, and even an interesting section on dealing with the female mind. It all came back to love and affection, of course, but it wasn’t just about sex, which she got the distinct impression that that was what Rumplestitlskin thought. 

A high pitch whistle pulled Belle from her thoughts, and she went about fixing their tea quickly. 

Belle found him sitting on the living room couch as he absently rolled the handle of his cane about in hand. He wasn’t focused on anything in particular (not unless he found her curtains incredibly fascinating).

“Penny for you thoughts?” she asked as she held his tea out for him.

Rumplestiltskin blinked. “What?” 

Frowning, Belle asked, “That - that is the expression? Penny for your thoughts?”

Ruby had asked her it several times, so Belle was fairly sure that she had said it correctly.

“Yes,” he replied as he took the tea from her. 

She waited a moment and asked, “Well?”

Instead of answering her right away, Rumplestiltskin took a sip of his tea. It was a stalling tactic and not a very good one for him. Belle also noticed that he was careful not to look at her.

“Nothing of particular interest,” he finally said before lapsing back into an awkward silence.

Though Belle was glad that he hadn’t flat out lied to her, she found herself still becoming a little more than aggravated with him. It was just a silly book. 

“It’s not all that romantic,” Belle said.

She wasn’t really sure why she said such a thing. Perhaps it was only to fill the air with something other than the tense silence that had fallen between them, but again his attention shifted sharply to her. 

Crinkling his brow together, Rumplestiltskin asked, “What?”

“The book,” she said. “It’s not that romantic. At all, really. It actually reads more like a cook book or owners manual than a book about…about that.”

That was true. The entire thing was very upfront and frank about the whole issue of sex. That was partly why Belle had found it so fascinating. 

Sex wasn’t something that completely unknown to her even before she and Rumplestiltskin had reunited. It was something, however, that was not discussed beyond basic function and purpose in her circle of society back home. She still vividly remembered the conversation that her nurse had had with her when she was eleven. It mostly what she could expect to happen to her over the next few years, but the part that did deal with what she would have to do when she married had been riddled with veil metaphors. To this day she couldn’t look at a sword and sheath without thinking of what she had been told. 

Everything else she had learned either from the romantic stories in books her mother had enjoyed reading or from her own experiences. Not that a lot of it was that hard to figure out, but it had been refreshing to read something that was just so straightforward about the whole thing.

A glance at Rumplestitlskin, however, told her that he must not think the same thing.

“You don’t believe me,” Belle said.

“I wouldn’t know,” he replied. “I haven’t had the pleasure of reading it for myself.”

Belle turned her head a bit and narrowed her eyes. He was teasing her and trying to make light of clearly something that was comfortable between them. However, she had caught the slight challenge in his tone. The one that just suggested that perhaps she hadn’t been reading it for strictly academic purposes. 

Belle wasn’t one to back down from a challenge.

Setting her tea onto her coffee table, she gently took his away and turned herself so she was facing him on the couch. It wasn’t the perfect angle, with her leg tucked underneath her and he only being able to face her so far because of his bad knee, but it was enough for her purposes. 

Before Rumplestiltskin could truly understand what she was doing, Belle leaned forward and pressed her lips against his. It wasn’t overly romantic, not as some of their other kisses in the past had been, but it still sent a pleasant shiver through her. Feeling his lips tighten to move, Belle pulled away though she kept her face close to his.

“Did you notice how I didn’t move my lips? Just pressed them to yours?” she asked. “That’s called a nominal kiss.”

Rumplestiltskin was opening his mouth to respond when she pressed her lips to his again. This time, she turned her head slightly to the side and moved her bottom lip just a little. Belle would admit a slight thrill of satisfaction when he sucked in a sharp breath through his nose. Like the first time, when he began to add pressure, Belle pulled away.

“That,” she said a bit breathily, “is a combination of a bent kiss and a throbbing kiss.”

“That’s very interest-.”

Her lips were on his again. This time, she opened her mouth and lightly ran her tongue along his bottom lip as she touched his cheek. She wasn’t exactly sure which one of them made the pleased hmming sound, but she enjoyed the feel. 

When he went to deepen the kiss, she didn’t pull away this time. Just enjoyed the feel of his mouth against hers. After some time, Belle broke the kiss but kept her hand against his cheek and her forehead resting against his.

“And what was that called?” Rumplestiltskin asked. 

“A touching kiss,” Belle replied. Licking her suddenly dry lips, she asked, “Do you want know what else I learned?” 

His eyes drifted open, and it struck Belle how dark they had turned. 

“Very much so,” he said.

Belle grinned and decided that she should read banned books more often.


End file.
